A woman's view of hunting…with men
guns, dogs and birds
Day Six scraping the ceiling didn’t go so good. Imagine that. Because of the confined space, the bathroom had extra thick popcorn texture sprayed on it. Scraping the ceiling is one of those projects where the doing doesn’t sound so back until you actually start the doing. Then you remember that it really sucks, but once you start scraping, there’s no stopping, you have to finish the whole room.
After I had finished, Mitch looked at the ceiling and pointed out a spot that he thought still had a little too much texture. I wasn’t so sure, but thought that I would see if I could get a little more off. I got a little more off alright, the sheetrock was too wet and I scraped off the texture all the way to brown paper. And it wasn’t a little spot that came off, no I scraped off a big honkin strip of sheetrock. Thinking there was nothing else to do, I started stripping off all of the sheetrock top, really soaking the textured paint. What a mess.
Now not only have I scraped off too much, but I have a big horrible mess on the ceiling and on the floor. Mitch tried to come in and help, but he quickly lost patience and fled to the garage to pull nails out of the salvaged boards. Therapy I think.
The ceiling has to dry, then we’ll smear sheetrock mud over the whole ceiling, after that we can texture the ceiling again. Just what we wanted to do, right. I’ll let you know tomorrow if we’re still married.
Day Four hit a snag. Big surprise. Mitch started to remove a one foot section of sheet rock from the end of the remaining closet and found the water supply vent pipe. The original plan was to remove the door from its present location which makes it a very shallow closet, cut off one foot from the end of the closet and move the door to the end, making the closet deeper and giving the room a more open feeling. Well not now. Moving the vent pipe would entail a very extensive, expensive and time consuming operation.
Mitch was really reluctant to tell me for fear of me going ballistic. Just one more reason to hate this house. No matter what I want to do, we have to alter and adjust our plans. I’ve thrown so many fits over the past five years, when we first started on this renovation path. But this time I surprised him and just shrugged my shoulders and said, “Oh well, we’ll just leave the door where it is and forget about moving the pipe.
He didn’t realize it probably helped that I had gone shopping earlier and bought the faucets, mirrors and fixtures that I liked without any interference, then came home and had two glasses of wine. I was feeling very relaxed.
Day Five today I’m going to scrape the nasty popcorn ceiling off, which is lots of fun. I have to stand on a ladder, wear a mask and goggles and stretch in the most contorted positions to scrape sections of the ceiling. Get down, move the ladder, climb the ladder, stretch, scrape, get down, move the ladder and on and on. You get the picture. Lots of fun, want to come and help?
Day One didn’t go as planned. I would have expected nothing less. Mitch wasn’t done installing the new front door that we had to put in to fit the hole in the wall. I forgot to mention that, sorry. The new tub/shower we bought wouldn’t fit through any of the doors into the house, so in order to get the new tub inside, he had to remove the front door and cut a bigger hole in the side of the house so that the tub would fit through the doorway. Mitch started that project two weeks ago and as usual, the three-day project took two weeks. The original structure of our house was built in 1928, when the short people ruled the world. Then an addition was added on in the 1930’s. Whoever built the original structure and the addition used whatever materials were available and there were no building codes then. The roof comes down and meets the top of the walls at right about six feet. There is no way to put in a regular height door without a building permit and an expensive front entryway built. So we did the next best thing, bought a solid wood door and cut inches off the top and bottom of the door so that it fit height wise. There was still the width to worry about. The original door was six-foot by thirty inches wide and did I mention it was an old fashioned homemade cabin door with a wooden slide bar? Straight out of the 19th century. Not the least bit in anyway energy efficient or even safe security wise. So the door had to go. I’ll post pictures.
I took out all of the shelves in the closets and tried removing the metal wall strips for adjustable shelving, but some of the screws were stripped and wouldn’t come out. So I gave up on getting much accomplished on day one and decided to take the dogs for a long walk.
Day Two, Mitch worked on finishing up installing the new storm door and because the weather was so beautiful, I decided that it would be a good day to mow. So I mowed the yard, pulled weeds, raked leaves and pretty much blew off another good day to work on the bathroom.
Day Three we actually got started. Mitch finished getting all of the metal strips out while I pulled all of the trim off around the window and doors. I pulled all of the base board out. While Mitch removed the doors and door frames and knocked out the sheet rock that encased the closets I went to the plumbing store and picked up the pedestal sinks we had ordered.. We found the vent pipe from the furnace which will have to be moved from the outer corner of where the closet was and no longer is. Mitch is getting his money’s worth out of his sawsall that I bought him. I think that’s his favorite tool.
Surprisingly, no fights yet. Is this an omen or the lull before the storm? I’ll keep you posted.
Today it officially begins. My first day of vacation and the start of the Gutting of the Bathroom. We have the most hideous master bath in the world, (my opinion). So we (me) decided that we would take a week’s vacation and totally remodel the bathroom. I mean how long can it take? We’re taking out the ugly tub and even uglier vanity with the wood grain laminate countertop. Who puts a wood grain laminate countertop in a bathroom anyway? The sink had started to chip and crack. There are two 70’s refugee globe lights hanging from swag chain over the vanity and one huge honkin mirror on the wall, complete with chips and backing scratched off. I’m not sure how mirror backing can come off when it stays on the wall, but oh well. When the lights were hung, evidently the person didn’t have a hole saw and cut a square hole so that the square edges of the holes peek out around the circular caps of the lights. Very attractive and stylish too. There is also a can light hung on the wall next to the toilet, to help you see for the ever important reading that men do in a bathroom. The lovely can light was also installed using the square hole for a round cover. But there is no light by the bath tub, guess you don’t really want to see that well in the shower. The linoleum on the floor has cracked. There are three closets just inside the doorway as you walk in giving you a cramped feeling that the walls really are closing in on you.
But all that goes away starting today. We are going to move the tub/shower to where the vanity was. Two of the three closets are going away forever. In place of a vanity, there will be two pedestal sinks and a cabinet between them that is actually two pieces, the base cabinet will have a granite countertop on it and the upper cabinet will be hung on the wall and have sides that meet the base. There will be two much smaller mirrors and there will be NO swag lights in there anywhere.
So far, we’ve argued over every piece for the bathroom. Mitch has traditional tastes and I am more modern, contemporary. It has almost gone to blows in the home improvement stores. I had almost come to the conclusion that this marriage will never work, because our tastes are so vastly different.
First is was the tub. Mitch declared that we could only have a one piece tub and shower combo. “Because no matter how careful you are or how good of a job you do caulking, the damn thing always leaks.” Try finding a really nice looking one piece tub/shower combo, there aren’t that many out there to choose from. Then is was the sinks. I found a really nice looking square pedestal sink that he hated, saying it looked like it was institutional. The really big argument came with the cabinets. Nothing readymade really grabbed either of us. I was willing to buy unfinished and make it work, but Mitch hated them all. He found a custom cabinet shop and went to talk to them without me to get some design ideas and costs. I just knew that custom cabinets would cost a fortune, granted they would be worth it, but I am working on a budget and figured the cabinets would bust the budget. Surprisingly, the price was very reasonable, so now Mitch and I could focus the next argument on the design of the cabinet. I said he is traditional, well if you have a fireplace mantel with a candlestick on one side, there needs to be a candlestick on the other side. That’s Mitch. Make me crazy. This is when I started to doubt our marriage.
We finally found the tub by accident, we had gone to buy tile for the floor and there high up on the rack on display, was a one piece tub/shower combo that I actually liked. I had Mitch drag one of those ladders only for use by store personnel over for me to climb up on and check it out. We bought it on the spot and called one of our friends to come and load it in their truck and take it home. We found two very nice oval pedestal sinks at a plumbing supply store and ordered them. After long heated debates, Mitch took me to the custom cabinet shop so that I could look at and touch actual cabinets instead of sketches on paper. We made a decision and now it’s on order. Things are starting to gel. I still have to go get towel bars, mirrors, faucets and lights (without Mitch), but I think we might make it. I’ll keep you posted and let you know how our progress goes.
The plan was that we fly into Boston, catch a bus to some bus stop, wait for owner of the car to come and pick us up and drive us to some unknown location to look at the car and if all goes well we pay him the cash, load up the car and drive home. I had never done anything like this, so needless to say I was concerned that we would fly halfway across the country to have our heads bashed in, robbed and left in a field to die by a serial killer like on TV. I know, I watch too many cop shows.
The owner of the station wagon showed up and was very nice, but a typical car salesman. After some more haggling, we paid for the car, loaded up our luggage and headed out to the highway. After driving the wrong direction for about 30 minutes, going toward Cape Cod instead of west to New York, we turned around and got on track to upstate New York. Our road trips are always an adventure. We don’t make hotel reservations and drive until we get tired. I only have one rule. NO creepy roadside motels.
The drive through upstate New York was beautiful. We were a little early, the first of September, so the trees hadn’t turned yet, but it was still beautiful. I loved the Finger Lakes and all of the vineyards and wineries, I was in heaven. We tasted many wines and bought lots of bottles of wine. You know me, stimulating the economy. Good thing we had just bought a station wagon to haul all of my finds. How timely.
After the Finger Lakes, we drove up to Niagara Falls. We got there late in the day and didn’t have to pay to park, or get in. Which was nice. There were still a ton of people running around taking in nature’s strength and beauty. But no one was willing to ride a barrel over the falls so that I could take photos of the historic event. And I take awesome photos. What a bunch of wet blankets.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the first excerpt and this one, come back for more.
I’ve been told that journaling your thoughts are very important. Sometimes I’m not so sure. I have feelings and emotions that I would love to express but can’t tell anyone nor can I write them down. If I write it down and someone was to read it, could hurt their feelings. I was raised to be very cognizant of others feelings and to not intentionally hurt someone. I know how I would feel if it were me.
I’m not talking about anarchy or murderous thoughts. You know when the everyday events in your life just get to you. Those little feelings and resentments just start to build and build. I feel that I’m getting slammed from all sides, work, home, life in general. Just feelings of being helpless to change my life and not having the courage to stand up for myself. If I write it down, then I might see how trivial and small the issues really are. Maybe that’s the point of journaling.
A woman's view of hunting...with men 
